English

A note on braids and Parseval's theorem

Quantum Algebra 2009-11-24 v1

Abstract

In 1988 Falk and Randell, based on Arnol'd's 1969 paper on braids, proved that the pure braid groups are residually nilpotent. They also proved that the quotients in the lower central series are free abelian groups. This brief note uses an example to provide evidence for a much stronger statement: that each braid bb can be written as an infinite sum b=0bib =\sum_0^\infty b_i, where each bib_i is a linear function of the ii-th Vassiliev-Kontsevich Zi(b)Z_i(b) invariant of bb. The example is pure braids on two strands. This leads to solving eτ=qe^\tau=q for τ\tau a Laurent series in qq. We set τ=1(1)n+1(qnqn)/n\tau = \sum_1^\infty (-1)^{n+1} (q^n - q^{-n})/n and use Fourier series and Parseval's theorem to prove eτ=qe^\tau=q. For more than two strands the stronger statement seems to rely on an as yet unstated Plancherel theorem for braid groups, which is likely both to be both and to have deep consequences

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0911.4275,
  title  = {A note on braids and Parseval's theorem},
  author = {Jonathan Fine},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.4275},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

3 pages. Revision of arXiv:0909.5178, with speculation on proof of main conjecture removed and discussion of Falk and Randell added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:14:41.898Z